The good thing about Penn scoring three touchdowns in the first half of the first quarter of Saturday’s game vs. Cornell is it gave spectators at Franklin Field ample time to prepare for the upcoming Ivy League championship celebration.

Maybe that meant thinking about how the Quakers got to this point after starting the season with three losses in its four games, including an ugly rout at the hands of Dartmouth in the league opener.

Or how they improved so dramatically from the team that went 2-8 last season or 4-6 the year before that.

Or, perhaps most of all, how Penn found such new life under first-year head coach Ray Priore, who seemed to push all the right buttons in taking the mantle from the legendary Al Bagnoli.

And of all the 17 championships the program has won — 10 coming with Priore as Penn’s longtime assistant coach — this one may have been the most improbable.

“They probably don’t realize what they accomplished,” a smiling Priore said in the postgame press conference, shortly after the students rushed the field and players smoked victory cigars.

Probably not. Winning the Ivy League is difficult any season because there’s hardly any margin for error. But to do it in a year after you get absolutely rocked in your first conference game is a testament to the players’ resolve with Priore calling the 2015 Quakers the “most gritty team I’ve been around in my tenure here.”

And though he wouldn’t say so himself, Priore is a big reason why that grittiness manifested itself over the last six games when the Quakers could have so easily packed it in.

An intense coach who’s waited his whole life to be in charge, Priore had about as perfect of a first season as anyone could have. Consider:

“I’d say this has been a heck of a ride, Coach P, and I thank you for all of it,” senior captain Dan Connaughton said in the postgame press conference, turning to his head coach. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Moments later, Priore and the players got up and left the room, the celebration surely continuing into the night. But maybe not too long.

“I gotta get some sleep tonight,” the coach said as he exited. “I haven’t slept in 13 weeks.”

He deserves a long nap. But something says he’ll be back on the recruiting trail very soon.

– Dave Zeitlin C’03

—

Note: there will be more coverage of Penn football’s incredible season in the next magazine issue. Until then, here are a few of my favorite photos of the celebration, courtesy of Penn Athletics: